90 DARWINIAN ISM. 



tall and thin ; and so perhaps his spine the weak point. 

 The sea-sickness may have acted either on its ganglia or 

 itself ; and it is consistent with this that it was from the 

 water-cure alone, the cold douche, that he received any 

 benefit. 



The voyage otherwise was an infinite gain to Darwin. 

 Thus, as we have seen, it was an infinite gain to him in 

 account with science ; but it was no less an infinite gain 

 to him in account with manhood. For science, during 

 the voyage, or as a savant, Charles Darwin trained him- 

 self ; but as a man he grew in the new life. Hitherto, 

 on the whole, his education in humanity had been, boldly 

 to say so, provincial and scholastic. Certain usual social 

 experiences were, of course, necessary and inevitable. He 

 could shoot, too ; and even jump a bar as high as his 

 Adam's apple. Then there were the profaner eventualities 

 of the sporting set. But both experiences and eventualities 

 proved insufficient to relax the stiffening of propriety in 

 his father's son, or his grandfather's grandson. A certain 

 provincial precision was, it may be, even present to im- 

 press him on the part of his relatives at Maer. 



Then, after that, there were the Professors gentlemen 

 certainly, but not exactly men of the world. 



It was from all this, and impressed, moreover, with the 

 idea that he was only an apprentice, as substitute and stop- 

 gap to gather materials for the journeymen, his superiors, 

 that Charles Darwin stepped on to the deck of the Beagle. 

 Tall, thin, young not yet twenty-three, awkward in 

 movement, a mere unfledged student, stiff, formal, un- 

 certain, but very willing, he was not a happy man at first 

 under the eyes of his shipmates. Much as he found 

 them, they probably found him. As they were strange 

 to him, and he felt awkward with them ; he, doubtless, 

 was strange to them, and they felt awkward with him. 

 So striking, telling disconcerting, perhaps was the new 



